When Using Reverse Proxy, Backend Server Does 301 Back to The Proxy Server or Changes URL

Question

As a learning exercise in order to understand more about reverse proxy. I decided to use my private cloud server as a reverse proxy server and try to bypass corporate firewall (when I am at work) to allow myself to access gmail.

I have came up with the following Proxy configuration (please dont mind the square brackets):

SSLProxyEngine on
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyVia Off

[Proxy *]
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from xxx.xxx.xxx
[/Proxy]

ProxyPreserveHost On

ProxyPass /qqq https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail
ProxyPassReverse /qqq https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?service=mail

ProxyPass /qqqqq http://mail.google.com/mail
ProxyPassReverse /qqqqq http://mail.google.com/mail

The outcomes of the above configuration as follows:

1. When I navigate to myserver.com/qqq, the backend server (Google) simply changes URL and redirects me to google.com. Although I have "ProxyPreserveHost On"

2. When I navigate to myserver.com/qqqqq, Google does 301 back to my proxy server, which redirects me again to Google and I end up in the loop.

I have read a number of posts here at stackoverflow, but could not extract any helpful info from them:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5277107/apache-reverse-proxy-changes-url

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6385638/proxy-pass-follow-redirect-on-server

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1144286/how-to-tell-apache-in-reverse-proxy-mode-to-intercept-or-trap-302-responses-fro

My questions here are:

1. How to prevent Google from changing the URL, and instead transparently display content

2. What can I do in order not end up in 301 loop between my proxy server and Google

If you think I have missed/omitted/misunderstand something, please do let me know

Thank you, Alex

Answer 1

I have done that by the following code. You can try it...

    ProxyPreserveHost On
    <Proxy *>
            AddDefaultCharset off
            Order deny,allow
            Deny from all
          Allow from all
    </Proxy>

            ProxyPass /google http://www.google.com/
            ProxyHTMLURLMap http://www.google.com /google

    <Location /google>
            ProxyPassReverse /
            ProxyHTMLInterp On
            ProxyHTMLURLMap  /      /google
            RequestHeader    unset  Accept-Encoding
    </Location>